


Sunrise

by lorata



Category: Horizon: Zero Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: During Canon, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Missing Scene, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Past Character Death, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:01:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28141314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lorata/pseuds/lorata
Summary: ///[function: true]{{When this pine sapling}}{{grows to flower...}}{{who'll be here?}}[function: true]///--found in the Sacred Land, inside the Ancient ArmoryFARO Plague. HADES. Two apocalyptic events nearly a thousand years apart. Two women united by more than genes: in strength, compassion, intensity, the need to know, to see, to learn. Respected, even loved, but always one foot apart.Aloy has moved mountains and shaken kingdoms in search of her mother, and now she has to save the world. With battle looming, Elisabet Sobeck's corrupted journal entries come online one after another. Even with all the preparations, how can Aloy do anything else but stop to read?
Comments: 9
Kudos: 18
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Sunrise

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sumi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sumi/gifts).



> Thank you to my betas and cheerleaders, and thank you to Sumi for the excuse to go back to this game. I've listened to the soundtrack for a month straight now. Happy Yuletide!

_On the far side of resignation, far beyond recrimination and regret, lay relief._

_GAIA Prime facility loomed behind her, walls and doors locked tight. Below, the swarm: mindless and intelligent all at once, all of Faro’s ruthlessness and cunning and none of the nearly infinitesimal glimmer of conscience that could be wrangled with the right application of leverage. Inside, humanity’s hope for a new beginning: millions of contingencies, new responsibilities, thousands of future lives whose very existence depended on careful monitoring and programming and the work of a ragtag team of asshole geniuses. So much liability. So many ways it could go wrong. How many apocalypses danced on the head of a pin?_

_Out of her hands now. For better or worse, humanity’s future lay behind her, behind those walls and with the Alphas and not with Elisabet Sobeck, not anymore. For Elisabet —_

_700 miles, said her Focus, a faint triangle at the corner of her vision pointing along the distant horizon. Seven hundred miles on foot while Faro’s machines ravaged the world around her; seven hundred miles of rock and devastated forest without supplies, without shelter, without companionship, without weapons. Seven hundred miles with only an environmental suit, a month’s worth of nutrient paste in tubes and her own recycled fluids to keep her going, and the hope that the suit’s tight seals would make her invisible to the inescapable swarm._

_First step: boot crunched on stone, off-balance. Elisabet had practiced in the suits, they all had with Herres so fanatical about all ZD sites sticking to monthly drills. But in closed conditions, not with the distant scream of the machines and the air whipping around her facemask and the mountain peak in front of her, forbidding and terrifying. But the first step held, and the second — third she skidded on ice — but then fourth, and fifth, and sixth. And wasn’t seven a lucky number? After that she stopped counting and fell into the rhythm of one foot, then another, one, two, one, two, easiest pattern in the universe._

_The good thing: she’d already saved the world, as much as anyone could hope to do. Now she only had to go home._

_Faro’s voice in her ear, sharp with exasperation:_ You always did have to be a martyr, Lis _._

 _Even in her head she can’t help shooting back:_ Maybe, Ted, but you have to live with the consequences.

_Satisfying to imagine his face, flushed red as he snaps his mouth closed. He had been right about one thing: she could never resist a fight._

_Red rivers flowed beneath her: the eyes of the swarm, trampling over tree and brush, splintering trunks and sending branches crashing to the ground. Chasing down deer and rabbit and wolf — she had the sharp, funny-not-funny thought, like the first, trapped half-inhale of breath following the snap of bone, that maybe a moose gave one of the Scarab machines a good fight before the biomass converters got it. She stopped at the curve of a ledge, pressed one hand to the hard carapace of her suit as though she could massage away the ache in her chest as the swarm blazed across the river._

_Her whole body shook with hopeless fury, Elisabet wrapped her arms as far around herself as she could, rocked back and forth on her heels to stop the sensation that she might root directly to the stone and stay there, a testament to the future of the present’s horror. The urge to bend, pick up a stone and throw it at the storm coiled in the base of her spine like molten steel, but Elisabet found her heartbeat, closed her eyes, recited the Fibonacci sequence in her mind until it passed._

_Even if one looked up and spotted her lone dark shadow against the mountain’s snowy peak, her suit’s seals would hold, keeping her biomass signature safely locked away. It took everything to keep her teeth gritted until her jaw locked to old back a litany of curses, but she found the will. Imagine if they’d all sacrificed so much for ZD only to fall because Elisabet couldn’t hold back one last, futile, barbaric yawp._

(One for you, Naoto.)

_All too soon the swarm passed, churning and roaring into the distance. Elisabet exhaled, picked a point on the horizon, and stepped forward. One foot in front of the other, Elisabet reminded herself. Time to go home._

* * *

Wind whistled over the peak, whipping snow into Aloy’s cheeks. She sat on the edge of the cliff, legs dangling over the side, turning the spear over in her hands. Rivers of of glowing blue traced their way over the metal in soft, pulsing lines. A beautiful weapon, the key to defeating HADES — finally in her hands. And Aloy had to warn the others that HADES was coming: every reason for speed.

And yet —

_I’m okay with this. I want to go home. Goodbye._

Aloy knew Elisabet died long ago. Learning about the Old Ones fascinated Aloy long before they brought her to her mother, and she knew — she _knew_ — that every person in those images, all those voices, had long since turned to dust. But seeing the memorial … hearing Elisabet’s final act of sacrifice … brought her death back into sharp, unflinching reality.

She hadn’t been dead until that moment. Not really. Until then Aloy thought if she had delved deep enough, looked hard enough, maybe she would find —

Well. Didn’t matter now.

Meridian lay far below her, and with it, her objective. Aloy stood, lashed the spear to her back. The struts of metal and wood extended out into a rope some ten feet out from the cliff’s edge, and she backed up, launched into a run —

**> >DAMAGED FILE REPAIRED: [SOBECK JOURNAL, 11-19-64 R](https://horizon.fandom.com/wiki/Sobeck_Journal,_11-19-64_R)**

Aloy missed.

Childhood reflexes kicked in as the rope slipped from her fingertips. Aloy relaxed, forcing the panicked tension from her body. She hit the ledge feet-first, limbs loose, staggered sideways and collapsed onto the path as pain shot up her calves. For a long moment she lay there, a rock digging into her ribs, pain and shock fighting for the upper hand.

Still curled up on the ground, Aloy winced and jerked her chin down, activating the Focus control to open the file. Words filled her vision, and for those few moments, nothing mattered: not the cold, not the hard rock below her, not the slice of air working its way back into her lungs. She’d found another piece of Elisabet, and Elisabet was speaking.

Elisabet spoke with such passion and fire in her presentations, an eloquence that always escaped Aloy and made her feel — well. Like she knew where the missing 0.53% had gone. But her journal — a private text file, Elisabet’s eyes only — the words came shorter, thoughts choppier, much more like a Nora girl alone on the desert with nothing but machines for company. Aloy’s heart squeezed.

She read it again, again — laughed at the image of the glass wall, imagined Elisabet’s distaste, pictured her requisitioning a can of black paint and splashing it over the monolith in silent protest — and felt a knot within her unwind. The technical details, unfamiliar words, none of that mattered. Here was Elisabet with no one watching: exhausted, compassionate, practical, finding humour in the dark. And at the end — brave.

Always brave.

Aloy pushed herself to her feet. No broken bones. Bruises, maybe, but she would tend to those at the Spire. For once Sylens said nothing in her head, and she sat in that silence as she turned, took the unsteady boardwalk path round the curve of the mountain. To Meridian. To the Spire. To stop HADES from destroying Elisabet Sobeck’s dream.

* * *

The Spire bustled with preparations along the western ridge as Meridian prepared for HADES’ attack. Avad had listened to Aloy’s warning without hesitation; if she stopped to think about it, she might feel the strangeness of it, that the head of the Carja Sundom took the counsel of a Nora outcast. And he wasn’t the only one, apparently: _Many came for you, by name_ , said Blameless Marad, a statement that left Aloy baffled.

Who came for her? And why? Didn’t they know she was no leader?

Marad said Aloy’s friends waited, but maybe she would wait. Seek out her room — Olin’s room — and steal a few moments to herself before she had to face another wave of adoration she didn’t know if she could weather.

**> >DAMAGED FILE REPAIRED: [SOBECK JOURNAL, 7-16-65 R](https://horizon.fandom.com/wiki/Sobeck_Journal,_7-16-65_R)**

Aloy skidded to a stop halfway across the bridge. A guard called to her and she waved him off without looking, bringing up the file. Her heart thudded in her chest, the Sun-Ring’s frantic drumbeats. Fingers tightened on the rough stone. Eyes flicked back and forth, absorbing the information as greedily as water gulped in an oasis.

After she finished, Aloy stared out over the bridge, barely noticing the people crossing back and forth behind her. Elisabet, strong and stern and capable — the same Lis who tore Ted Faro a new conscience every time they spoke — needing to call GAIA and speak to the AI before she could sleep at night. Like a child calling for their mother, except the child had also created the mother, and — this is why Aloy left stories to the Elders and poetry to the metal flowers.

Elisabet the leader, worrying about her people, this Aloy could understand. She was not a War Chief, and Zero Dawn’s scientists no Braves, yet Aloy had seen the Nora devastated by attacks far smaller than what Earth faced under the Faro scourge. Small wonder Elisabet had concerns about the safety of her command. But through it all she had kept moving, referring even bad news to her team with constant forward momentum. Always: back to work, keep moving, we must succeed.

Faced with a glimmer of hope in the Odyssey’s launch, Elisabet had turned to work. Gradually the sounds of the Spire drifted back into Aloy’s notice: hammers, creak of rope as spars of metal were dragged over uneven ground, low murmur of conversation broken by occasional shouts. This, Aloy understood.

So strange to imagine Elisabet locked away in her room, curled up on one side, head on her arm, turned to face the hologram of a woman who existed only in a computer. Strange to think of her vulnerable, seeking comfort from — anyone, really. Did she turn to GAIA because of all the time they spent together? Because of their shared connection? Because there was no one else she could safely show her fears?

Aloy tapped her fingers on the stone, frowning out over the river. Olin’s room and its promise of rest before the battle lay ahead — but in her final months Elisabet had chosen to seek comfort in GAIA. Aloy did not have GAIA, but like her mother, she was not facing this threat alone.

Olin’s room could wait.

* * *

“Did the Goddess … tell you our chances?”

Not too long ago, Aloy would have snarled at the question. What did the Goddess ever do for Aloy? Leave her motherless, an outcast, let all the other Nora — the elders — sneer at her when she passed? What good was the Goddess when the machines turned wild and tore through villages, leaving children bleeding in the dust? What good was the Goddess when the sky held back the rains and the rivers dried? When lips cracked and bled and mothers fainted with their babies in their arms?

But now she knew. Goddess and GAIA and a woman working hard, so hard, to save the planet she loved for people she would never see. People she gave her life for and she never knew if they would even exist.

What would the Goddess say? GAIA was the Goddess and GAIA held Elisabet within her like a thunderjaw’s heart.

Elisabet: thinking of the scientists pulled from their homes, hoping they understood the reason for her actions. Responsibility for others a pressure at her back, not the knife of justification slicing away any guilt or doubt.

Elisabet: dreaming of a ship that carried humanity’s hope, and refusing to give up on her own work in spite of it, because this was her planet, her people, not a world far away.

Aloy couldn’t speak for the Goddess, but she could give him hope. And Teb smiled, eyes crinkled at the corners, relief as wide and bright as sunrise over the high cliffs. Aloy nodded, turned away from him and —

**> >DAMAGED FILE REPAIRED: [SOBECK JOURNAL, 10-31-65 R](https://horizon.fandom.com/wiki/Sobeck_Journal,_10-31-65_R)**

“Aloy?” Teb called, voice high with concern. “All you all right?”

“Fine, Teb,” Aloy said without turning, her own reply stretched taut as rope over a crevasse. “I’ll see you at dawn.”

As quartermaster Teb stood next to the cache of supplies for the ridge, directing others and taking constant questions. Aloy could hardly stand next to him and hope for privacy as she checked her Focus. She glanced around, desperation clawing at her neck — the file blinked in the lower corner of her vision, inviting her to read. One small gesture and she could have more information of her mother. But the Spire bristled with people, there was nowhere to go —

A pile of barrels, likely filled with ammunition. For now it sat alone against a wall, stacked and unneeded until the attack. Aloy exhaled in a rush and ducked behind it, squeezing into the small gap between wood and rough stone. Her ankle stuck out into the air and she wrenched her knee pulling it back in. If anyone saw her she would have one devil of a time explaining, but it didn’t matter. She had her privacy for the moment, and that was all she needed.

She pulled up the file, breath catching in her throat, and read.

Like before Aloy stayed a moment in silence, turning the words over in her mind. This was the Elisabet the others knew: professional, aloof even in her own head, sharp and unforgiving in her judgement, with only a flicker of emotion beneath the hard veneer of work, work, work. Again Elisabet’s sense of responsibility: _I will not let that happen_.

No more ‘we must succeed’, Aloy noted. Not alone. Triumphs were communal, but failures private. How did it feel, to carry that weight?

In the privacy of her cramped corner, Aloy allowed herself a small, ironic huff of laughter.

Elisabet wrote of a noose closing in, and no longer of any nights falling asleep with GAIA’s voice in her ear. Did she no longer have time to spare in writing down these non-essential private moments, or did she no longer allow herself that vulnerability?

No friends, either. Her colleagues made overtures, and — at least in the data files — Elisabet rebuffed them. They clearly respected her, and mourned her loss with a very real grief, but that glass wall Elisabet joked about hating seemed to follow her around the GAIA Prime compound. But they stayed for her, gave up their families and lives for her, for her dream of a future they would never see. Not for Zero Dawn — for Elisabet, because she believed in it.

Whether she liked it or not, Aloy could count on both hands allies (and friends) she had turned away so she could travel the world alone. And yet —

 _Many have come, for you by name_.

Aloy untangled herself from her hiding place and stretched, cracking her neck. Not time for sleep yet.

* * *

She wove her way around the ridge, speaking to old friends and unexpected allies both. All came for a herd of their own reasons, not just for Aloy (thank the stars) but Aloy had twisted the thread that drew them near. They spoke of loyalty, of gratitude, of shared vengeance and retribution, of blood spilled and blades drawn together. Aloy thanked them and continued on with the odd sense that her world had expanded when she turned her back on it.

“Red sun at night, courage in the fight,” one of the guards said cheerfully as Aloy passed, and hefted his armful of ammunition for the cannon.

Aloy paused halfway up on stretch of stone just past a small, rickety bridge of planks and posts. Meridian lay across the water, distant ramparts and waterfalls painted a glowing golden-red by the setting sun. _The noose is tightening_ , Elisabet had written, and Aloy felt her now, not a hand of reassurance on her shoulder, like Rost, but a feeling of equal tension in the back of her thoughts. It calmed her a little, knowing that Elisabet had faced worse nearly a thousand years ago.

Although now, looking out at the encampments, Aloy couldn’t help a wave of — not doubt, but … weight, definitely. Not as badly as in the cradle with the Elders staring at her in reverence when they had spat at her hours prior, but a sister to it. She never asked for this — for these people to come here, in her name, to fight for her, for a war they didn’t even understand — but they were here now, and she couldn’t ask them to stop now. HADES must be stopped, even if the pressure made Aloy want to scream.

And if Varl called her the Anointed one more time —

Kidding. Or, well, mostly kidding. Varl had gone through so much because of her, and still he came, and he told the others not to bow. That meant something. A lot of somethings. If Aloy could spare little comfort for him and his crisis of faith and journeying, at least he took it well. Aloy imagined Elisabet faced with Varl’s admiration, his raw, emotional honesty and open admissions of vulnerability and enjoyed an actual laugh.

Erend and his Vanguard helped. Irreverent and rude and none of them cared about the Nora — Erend came for Aloy and his men came for a good fight, no questions asked. Big metal devils and more men than they could count? Best day they’d had all week. Erend kept them in check and didn’t try for sentiment, which at least —

**> >DAMAGED FILE REPAIRED: [SOBECK JOURNAL, 1-15-66 R](https://horizon.fandom.com/wiki/Sobeck_Journal,_1-15-66_R)**

_Buried alive, for life’s sake._

“Aloy?” Erend, rough and gentle as always, only once, before retreating. In the background, one of the Vanguard murmuring, cut off by Erend’s swift dismissal: “She’s talking to her Goddess, useless! Show respect.”

More than ever Aloy wished for a physical copy. A rock etched with runes or glyphs she could clutch to her chest. Carja parchment she could turn over and over in her hands until the creases became as familiar as nocking an arrow. Each new journal felt like watching a painting unfold: now linework, or a splash of colour, or a vast background with new details for the eyes to get lost in. But she could only pull up the Focus and read, while the world around her continued in the background.

Elisabet at her best: afraid and forcing her fears into the one thing she could control — herself, her actions, her solutions. Looking after others, saving who she could and respecting the sacrifice of those who could not, like any War-Chief. And yet in all of that, calling the salvation of the world coincidence and not the result of her hard work.

Triumphs are communal, failures borne alone. Elisabet assured her Braves as best she could, then wept in her office behind its black-painted wall. Did she ask for GAIA, or was even that small comfort too much? Did anyone see the cracks in Dr. Sobeck’s armour before she slipped out to close the facility door, or was their first hint of it a weary ‘I want to go home, goodbye’.

Aloy had no words of comfort, and no means of sending them back a millennia to a woman long dead, but she saw Elisabet’s tears and bore witness in the future she gave everything to build. 

The Vanguard were watching. Aloy dismissed the file and squared her shoulders, saw them straighten as her attention returned. Erend watched her, dark eyes careful and trademark grin a question at the corners, and Aloy favoured him a smile. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said.

Erend’s posture loosened, and his real smile broke free. “Me too.”

* * *

At Olin’s apartment, with nothing left to do, the weight of it all pressed down on her again. The image-memory of Elisabet confiding in GAIA on her difficult nights tugged at her, and in a moment when her brain left her body she tried calling Sylens. No answer — obviously, and also, fortunately. What would she even say to him, and how did she think he’d respond. Expecting comfort from the voice in her ear made about as much sense as trying to dance with a Deathbringer.

But — she did have someone, in a way. Aloy sat up, plucked the Focus from where she’d tucked it safely away, and snapped it into position. She called up every file and recording she had on Elisabet Sobeck and asked them to play one after the other. Maybe asking for help from ghosts was not the worst thing after all.

Aloy fell asleep to the sounds of grief, anger, compassion, and hope.

* * *

And then — they won. HADES defeated, the last remnant of the Faro scourge. And in all the clamour, all the celebration and joy and invitations, there was only one place Aloy wanted to be.

* * *

Aloy tamed a Strider for her journey. She foraged, hunted fish and game, slept under the protection of towering trees or in the soft rustle of red-reeds. Overhead the sky shone with a faint haze, sunsets striking in their brilliance. As she travelled further west the harsher the wilds became: trees and meadows disappeared, replaced with scrub-grass and cactus. The journey lasted weeks. Aloy couldn’t help but think of Elisabet, cut off from help or supplies, stuck in a heavy suit, walking this whole way alone. Her whole life Elisabet preferred solitude in her most private moments, but had it ever been this complete? A world cut off from life, air choked with toxins, the swarm a constant presence in the distance.

But the swarm couldn’t take the stars. At least some nights the smog and haze would clear, making room for a patch of open sky. At night Aloy rolled over onto her back, tuned out the sound of the Strider trotting around her makeshift camp, and stared up at the sky and its explosion of light. She liked to choose a patch of stars under an Old Ones’ ruin, imagine that Elisabet had rested there and looked up at the same sky.

**! Data Integrity Restored…[GAIA Log: 3 Feb 2065 R](https://horizon.fandom.com/wiki/Gaia_Log:_3_Feb_2065_R)**

She didn’t even notice at first.

With the journal entries restored, Aloy had all but forgotten about the final file buried in the back of her Focus. GAIA logs could be anything, and while it would no doubt be fascinating, it didn’t fill her with the same hunger. The notice popped up at the corner of her vision, but the stretch ahead was rocky, her mount jittery. Aloy had to concentrate not to fall off her Strider and so she dismissed it. She didn’t remember to call it up until days later.

_OK, GAIA, sorry about that. Where was I?_

Aloy fell off the Strider anyway.

After weeks of replaying every single scrap of data she could, a new file of Elisabet’s voice hit her like a Thunderjaw. Aloy stayed sprawled on the ground while the Strider, no longer startled, pranced back and nosed her boots. When her ribs no longer twinged, she called up the file again and listened.

Clouds drifted across the sky. The Strider snuffled, shook its head, wandered a little distance away to graze on a few short stalks of stiff grass. A small lizard skittered over the ground, then paused, head erect in warning, and dashed back into its hole, alarmed by the sudden outbreak of sobbing.

By the time her Focus gave her an estimate of less than a day’s travels, Aloy lost count of how many times she’d listened. She memorized the data file: not only the words, but the cadence, ever pause of hitch of breath, every lilt that might mean a smile. Some days it made her laugh; other days the tears choked her and she had to let her mount track their trail. The closest connection she would ever have to her mother, and she would never know how Elisabet felt about her legacy. But Elisabet had not seen the world that grew up after her, and there were flowers in bursts of purple, blue, yellow and red; vines that wound around trees as tall as the ruins; birds that sang as loud as Aloy’s biggest shout and came to land right by her feet if she sat still long enough. Even in the desert, animals danced and cactus stretched their arms up to the sky, defiant against the scorching sun. There were machines that GAIA made to heal the Earth that would no longer try to harm it.

If Elisabet’s desperate wish for the world turned out with such magnificence, maybe Aloy could hope for even a sliver of that success.

It felt right that life returned as she neared the Sobeck ranch. Grasses rustled beneath her feet, and tall trees rocked gently in the breeze. Climbing ivy trailed the worn-down sign and birds frolicked overhead, chasing each other as they chirped and twittered. Purple flowers bloomed amid the reeds.

And in the centre —

The coiled wire at the centre of Aloy’s chest sprang loose with a near-millennium’s worth of shared tension.

 _Home_.

**Author's Note:**

> I think I account for at least 100 of the view counts on the top "Aloy finds Elisabet" video on Youtube. It's important! For the vibe! But also, man, my heart. Thank you for reading!


End file.
